and won’t let me do so. Thomas, I want to go back to Ashlydyat.”
“I have come to take you back, my dear father.”
“Ay, ay. And mind you are firm when she says I must not go because of the fever. The fever will not hurt me, Thomas. I can’t be firm. I have grown feeble, and people take my will from me. You are my first-born son, Thomas.”
“Yes.”
“Then you must be firm for me, I say.”
“I will be, father.”
“This is a rough road, Thomas.”
“No, it is smooth; and I am glad that it is so. But you are tired.”
The old knight bent his head, as if choosing his steps. Presently he lifted his head:
“Thomas, when do they leave Ashlydyat?”
“Who, sir? The Verralls? They have not had notice yet.”
Sir George stopped. He drew up his head to its full height, and turned to his son. “Not had notice? When, then, do I go back? I won’t go to Lady Godolphin’s Folly. I must go to Ashlydyat.”
“Yes, sir,” said Thomas soothingly. “I will see about it.”
The knight, satisfied, resumed his walk. “Of course you will see about it. You are my son and heir, Thomas. I depend upon you.”
They pursued their way for some little time in silence, and then Sir George spoke again, his tone hushed. “Thomas, I have put on mourning for her. I mourn her as much as you do. And you did not get there in time to see her alive!”
“Not in time. No,” replied Thomas, looking hard into the mist overhead.
“I’d have come to the funeral, Thomas, if she had let me. But she was afraid of the fever. George got there in time for it?”
“Barely.”
“When he came back to Broomhead, and heard of it, he was so cut up, poor fellow. Cut up for your sake, Thomas. He said he should be in time to follow her to the grave if he started at once, and he went off then and there. Thomas”—dropping his voice still lower—“whom shall you take to Ashlydyat now?”
“My sisters.”
“Nay. But as your wife? You will be replacing Ethel sometime.”
“I shall never marry now, father.”
At length Broomhead was reached. Thomas held open the gate of the shrubbery to his father, and guided him through it.
“Shall we have two engines, Thomas?”
“Two engines, sir! What for?”
“They’d take us quicker, you know. This is not the station!” broke forth Sir George in a sharp tone of complaint, as they emerged beyond the shrubbery, and the house stood facing them. “Oh, Thomas! you said you were taking me to Ashlydyat! I cannot die away from it!”
Thomas Godolphin stood almost confounded. His father’s discourse, the greater part of it, at any rate, had been so rational that he had begun to hope he was mistaken as to his weakness of mind. “My dear father, be at rest,” he said: “we will start if you like with to-morrow’s dawn. But to go now to the station would not forward us: it is by this time closed for the night.”
They found the house in a state of commotion. Sir George had been missed, and servants were out searching for him. Lady Godolphin gazed at Thomas with all the eyes she possessed, thunderstruck at his appearance. “What miracle brought you here?” she exclaimed, wonderingly.
“No miracle, Lady Godolphin. I am thankful that I happened to come. What might have become of Sir George without me, I know not. I expect he would have remained at the stile where I found him until morning; and might have caught his death there.”
“He will catch that speedily enough if he is to wander out of the house at midnight in this mad manner,” peevishly rejoined my lady.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE LAST JOURNEY
“I beg your pardon, Lady Godolphin. That is not the question.”
“Not the question!” reiterated Lady Godolphin. “I say that it is the question. The question is, whether Sir George is better and safer here than he would be at Prior’s Ash. And of course he is so.”
“I think not,” replied Thomas Godolphin quietly. “He would be equally well at Prior’s Ash: equally safe, as I believe and trust. And the anxiety to be there, which has taken hold of his mind, has grown too strong to be repressed. To detain him here, against his wish, would make him ill, Lady Godolphin. Not returning home.”
“Prior’s Ash is an unhealthy place just now.”
“Its unhealthiness has passed away. The last to be attacked was—was Ethel. And you are aware that time, since then, may be counted by weeks.”
“Sir George is partially childish,” pursued Lady Godolphin. “You may see for yourself that he is so. It would be most unreasonable, it would be ridiculous to take notice of his whims. Look at his starting out of the house to-night, with nothing on, and roaming a mile or two away in the dark! Is that a proof of sanity?”
“It is a proof how fixedly his mind is bent upon returning home,” replied Thomas Godolphin. “He was endeavouring, as I have already informed you, Lady Godolphin, to make his way to the station.”
“I shall have him watched in future,” said she.
“Lady Godolphin,” he resumed, speaking in the calmly quiet tone which characterized him, unmistakably firm now, in spite of its courteousness: “I am here by the desire of my father to accompany him back to Prior’s Ash. I may almost say, to convey him back: for I fear he can no longer boast much power of his own, in any way. The last words I said to him, before entering, were, that he should start, if it pleased him, with to-morrow’s dawn. I must keep my promise.”
“Do you defy me, Thomas Godolphin?”
“I have no wish to do so. I have no wish to abate a particle of the respect and consideration due to you as my father’s wife. At the same time, my duty to him is paramount: I hold it more sacred, Lady Godolphin, than any earthly thing. He has charged me, by my duty, to take him back to Ashlyd—to Prior’s Ash: and I shall do so.”
“You would take him back, I suppose, if Prior’s Ash were full of snakes and scorpions?” returned my lady, somewhat losing her temper.
“It is full of neither. Nothing is there, so far as I am aware, that can harm Sir George. Can you urge a single good reason why he should not return to it, Lady Godolphin!”
The delicate bloom on my lady’s cheeks was surely heightened—or did Thomas Godolphin fancy it? “But, what if I say he shall not return?” she asked, her voice slightly raised.
“I think you will not say it, Lady Godolphin,” he replied. “It is Sir George’s wish to go to Prior’s Ash, and it is my province to see that wish carried out—as he has requested me. Much as I desire to respect your feelings and any plans you may have formed, they cannot weigh with me in this case. There is no necessity whatever for your returning home, Lady Godolphin, unless you choose to do so: but Sir George will leave for it to-morrow.”
“And you boast that you do not defy me!” cried Lady Godolphin, with a short laugh. “I would use force to keep him in this house, rather than he should go out of it against my will.”
“Force?” repeated Thomas Godolphin, looking at her for an explanation. “What sort of force?”
“Physical force,” she answered, assuming a degree of fair suavity. “I would command the servants to bar his exit.”
A faint smile crossed Thomas Godolphin’s lips. “Do not attempt that, Lady Godolphin,” he replied in the respectful manner of one who tenders earnest advice. “I should be sorry indeed to publicly oppose my authority to yours. You know the servants have, most of them, grown old in our service: and that may